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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26067358">Hold Me Tight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercolour/pseuds/silvercolour'>silvercolour</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Holding Hands, M/M, Post-Season 4, Symbolism everywhere, sense of impending doom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:13:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,541</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26067358</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercolour/pseuds/silvercolour</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon’s hands shake. The first time it happened was long ago, after he visited– or almost visited Mr. Spider.</p><p>It’s happening again now, but this time Martin is there beside him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>154</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Silver’s h/c fills</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hold Me Tight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for TMA hurt/comfort week on Tumblr, for monday’s prompt “shaky hands”.</p><p>I'll add all my fills for this week to the collection, so have a look at the others as well of you like h/c^^</p><p>With beta-help from the amazing Eyylish!</p><p>Is this my first TMA fic except for <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25115785">Peter's infamous Guardian Article?</a> Yep, it is...</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It might be night. Jon isn’t certain– it doesn’t matter anymore anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon is sitting up in bed, and looks at his hands. They are shaking, and he cannot seem to stop them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s happened before, this shaking. It’s not a slight thing, no vibration or simple forgot-your-gloves-in-winter kind of shaking. This is a quaking, like walls crumbling, or tears unshed– it’s unstoppable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It leaves him cold and empty, and staring into nothingness in their small scottish hideaway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first time it happened was long ago, after he visited– or </span>
  <em>
    <span>almost</span>
  </em>
  <span> visited Mr. Spider. He cannot remember how he got the shaking to stop back then. His grandmother had been angry that he’d stayed out so late and wouldn’t explain where he’d been (he couldn’t, because how does one explain following a story, or a storybook monster kidnapping a child? How could he explain the dread, the knowledge that he’d never see … see </span>
  <em>
    <span>who</span>
  </em>
  <span> again?) She only became concerned when he couldn’t hold his knife and fork at dinner– physically couldn’t hold on to them without shaking the things out of his hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t remember how long it took him to fall asleep that night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He does remember the knocking sound on a wooden door in the nightmare that woke him, the feeling of the wooden door still on his skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, in hindsight he’s surprised it hasn’t happened more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hands didn’t shake when Jane Prentiss attacked the Institute.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They didn’t even tremble in the tunnels under the Institute, when the Thing that Was Not Sasha came for them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They didn’t- well. One of his hands trembled when after he shook Jude’s hand- but it’s only slight, only a response to the searing pain. He forced his injured hand to remain still, which was a strain all on its own; but it hurt more to move it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was not awake after the Circus, but he can only assume that his hands kept as still as the rest of his body while he was trapped in that coma, and the visions it brought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The last time his hands shook like this was when he was in the Buried. He’d been stuck – stuck in place with nowhere to go, stuck with no way back that he could See, unable to find Daisy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d felt the crushing weight of the buried, and the silent, screaming fear of those trapped in it. He’d barely been able to move; hardly had space to breathe at times. Yet his hands had found a way to shake, and tremble, and make it even harder to move inch by tiny inch than it already was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This time, at least, there is space.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not a comfort at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hands haven’t stopped shaking since he read </span>
  <em>
    <span>that statement.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I open the door.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>A door again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can almost feel another wooden door against his skin once more, a memory– a nightmare– certainly both.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries to hold his own hands, to squeeze them together enough to stop the tremors. It doesn’t work, even seems to increase the shaking. He lets them go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels like the world has fallen from his hands, like cutlery from years ago. It feels like being back in that coffin, crushed under an unbearable weight, under the guilt of </span>
  <em>
    <span>I did this, this is my fault, why didn’t I See, why-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Right now he Sees everything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is too much. Too much fear, too much pain, and suffering, and biting cold– consuming fire– piercing words– digging knives– festering sores– crushing weights.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He Sees it all, feels it all, and feels it fuel him. And it is this that hurts most– not the pain and despair, but the fact that his body seems to crave it more than air. It is this, this powerlessness against his own body, his own actions, that makes his hands tremble now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon hates it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He </span>
  <em>
    <span>hates</span>
  </em>
  <span>, with a strength of emotion that should scare him, and doesn’t. What would be the point? There’s enough things to be scared of out there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon sits very still except his hands that </span>
  <em>
    <span>will not stop </span>
  </em>
  <span>and feels it all, and he hates, and feels empty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He Sees, and stares unseeing at his surroundings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Through the Seeing, he doesn’t notice Martin has woken up beside him. He only notices when Martin takes his hands in his own, and holds them.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not any sound that has woken Martin, but a stillness, and the lack of warmth beside him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They argued about it at first, about this pretend-normality of going to bed and waking up in a place where day and night are the same indistinguishable shade of twilight. Martin won the argument, and he stands by what he said then.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It can’t hurt, right? Let’s do it this way, as a way of </span>
  <em>
    <span>resisting,</span>
  </em>
  <span> of keeping- I don’t know, the old ways? I’m sure we can do that, together.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon had laughed at that, and agreed, although his laugh sounded hollow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The old ways– the way everything used to be, until a few days ago. At least, Martin thinks it’s only been a few days. It’s hard to tell; it’s hard to remember how long a moment lasts, or how many times they’ve gone to bed and woken up since everything ended, or since this mess began. He’s not sure which it is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cracking open an eye, Marin finds he can see Jon despite the closed curtains and the gloom outside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon appears to be… not glowing, not quite. He doesn’t give off any light at all, and there shouldn’t be enough light to see more than a silhouette of him. Instead, he appears backlit by a source of light that isn’t there at all. Martin can see him clearly, sitting on the edge of the bed and twisting, twisting, twisting his hands. There are red marks on the skin of his hands, but Jon doesn’t appear to have noticed. Instead he stares at the wall like he can see for miles. He probably can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin sits up, and takes Jon’s hands into his own. They’re not just twisting themselves, they’re shaking violently. He holds them, hoping to calm Jon, to quiet the shaking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He swings his other arm around Jon’s shoulder, and uses the leverage to pull them both down to lean against the headboard. It takes a bit of shifting before they’re both comfortable, but Jon doesn’t stop moving, and keeps twisting his hands together even as Martin holds them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The backlit appearance hasn’t left Jon yet, and on an impulse Martin takes his hand off of Jon’s shoulder, and puts it over his eyes instead.</span>
</p><p>Like flipping a switch, Jon goes still; although the shaking in his hands doesn’t stop. The backlighting seems to fade.</p><p>
  <span>Martin cannot help but think of the first time they held hands– of both first times. The very first time was in the Lonely, and it doesn’t count, not in the same way as holding hands usually counts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It matters a lot, because that contact, and Jon’s very presence there in the Mists was proof of how much he cares.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But to Martin it doesn’t count as holding hands. It wasn’t a choice at the time, but a </span>
  <em>
    <span>necessity</span>
  </em>
  <span>, pure survival, and the compelling need to not be Alone again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first time they held hands by </span>
  <em>
    <span>choice</span>
  </em>
  <span> was after arriving in Scotland. They’d hiked up the hills, behind the village, to find this place, through a cold and miserable rain. The little cabin was damp, and dreary, and barely furnished, but, as they dropped their bags in the living room, Martin grabbed Jon’s hand without thinking. They were safe, they were </span>
  <em>
    <span>home</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and they were there together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That first day they had barely let go of each other after that - although it made unpacking and fixing dinner quite hard. But the feeling of being safe-together was so overwhelming, so warm and strong that it was all worth it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Here and now, they lie together, entwined like that for several moments– an eternity– a heartbeat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Jon sighs, and leans his head completely against Martin’s hand. Martin slides his hand up to Jon’s forehead but keeps holding him softly. Jon’s hair sticks out at adorably odd angles from behind his hand. For a moment, they can only look at eachother.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s Jon who breaks the quiet: “Thank you.” A pause, then: “I had a… nightmare, I think.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon tries to sit up, but Martin holds on, and folds his hand more firmly around both of Jon’s.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Must’ve been one hell of a nightmare, you’re still shaking– are you sure you’re okay?” Concern laces his voice. He has to ask this even though he knows that </span>
  <em>
    <span>okay</span>
  </em>
  <span> has recently changed it’s meaning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon seems to consider the question for a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will be. You’re here,” he says, and rests his head against Martin’s broad shoulder instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re here </span>
  <em>
    <span>together.</span>
  </em>
  <span> It goes unspoken, but Martin hears it anyway. They’ll stick to the old ways, like they agreed (even when the old ways are holding-hands and hugs and a closeness only recently discovered between them).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’ll stick to the old ways, and resist the mad world outside their windows. And they’ll do it together.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My other fills for this week:</p><p><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26099584">DAY 2</a> the Admiral improves Jon’s bad day<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26127337">DAY 3</a> Hiking, Jon has an accident, and Strong!Martin<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26142172/chapters/63601369">DAY 4</a> Vampire!Jon, touch-starved, hugs (chapter 1 of 2)<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26164330">DAY 5</a> Martin has nightmares, but Jon is there with hugs<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26179093">DAY 6</a> Jonmartin, fluffy marriage proposal<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26196100">DAY 7</a> MAG160, told from Martin's POV</p><p>Please leave a comment and let me know what you think- I love hearing from you guys!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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